


post-classical

by actualtrash



Category: Dorohedoro
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, missing scenes maybe?? if dorohedoro was ecchi, tw brief joke of suicide and minor violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26572369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualtrash/pseuds/actualtrash
Summary: shin realizes that magic users are a lot less modest than humans through a series of unfortunate events
Relationships: Noi & Shin (Dorohedoro), Noi/Shin (Dorohedoro)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63





	post-classical

**Author's Note:**

> after talking with a friend on discord about how the reactions to nudity in dorohedoro (especially in the manga during the last few arcs) are pretty... nonchalant... i wanted to write about how thanks to a lack of major western religions, women’s bodies are a lot less stigmatized!!
> 
> honestly it isn’t that deep i just wanted to project and write shin being horny
> 
> it’s all in chronological order, so from their first year of knowing each other to current day— and there are no outright manga spoilers hurray!! but please read the manga

____________________

“— and I’m lending you a Cadillac for this mission. If there are any damages, it’s coming out of your paycheck.” 

He’s not sure if it’s the overwhelming smell of hookah, or the warm blinding lights, but Shin is finding it very hard to focus. Instead of the usual place he’d be briefed for jobs, either En’s room while the man had breakfast in bed, or one of the many great dining halls in his Mansion, he’d been called here. If the fuzzy neon lights outside— reading Club Big Boss, had intimidated him, the magenta-colored sectional he was currently seated in, _and_ the bikini-clad woman by his side were to put him in his grave.

“Shin, you _do_ know how to drive, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” Shin managed, staying stick-straight as the hostess, a head taller and a decade older, shifted against him. He felt each sequin on her top (which, to him, was no more than a glitzy excuse for underwear), then the bony part below her collarbone which melted into the soft swell of her chest. If he moves, even an inch, they’ll jiggle on him. Never before had he wished his arms were still rotten, motionless and numb. 

“Oh.” En pauses, as if it’s an issue. He lowers his mask just enough before bringing his pipe to his lips and taking a long, long, drag. Smoke leaves his mouth in an elegant, practiced fashion, and the two girls beside him don’t seem to mind it blowing back into their faces. “Well, that’s alright. You’ll have to learn somehow.”

At the moment, worrying about crashing one of En’s fancy convertibles is not on his mind. Later, it will be, but right now, it is not. _Right now_ , Shin can’t help but wonder if this... normal.

En was the last person he’d expect to take him to a titty-bar, much less fucking _own_ one. Isn’t it embarrassing, to name a place like this after yourself? Is it even okay for him to be here? He hasn’t eaten breakfast, but he’s getting poured another drink. Considering it’s nine in the morning, and there are considerably more patrons here than just the two of them, Shin is in awe at the fact that, yeah, this _is_ normal. En clears his throat, annoyed by the lack of a response, and Shin is brought back to whatever unfortunate reality this is.

“You know,” he says after a minute of eying him. “I have male staff here, if you would pref—“

“No. No thank you.” Because one person is already enough to make him itch. 

“Are you uncomfortable, Shin?”

He’s been good at keeping up appearances, appeasing those who want to be appeased, but he’s not going to lie about something so obvious. Nodding slowly, Shin hopes the woman beside him isn’t frowning under her mask.

“Why?”

Why? _Why?_ Because in no other sane world would a notorious leader bring his freshly employed assassin-for-hire to a place like this before noon and expect him to be cozy. Is he supposed to be making himself at home, sandwiching himself between the breasts of a stranger? Shin doesn’t even think En knows how old he is. 

The way En asks, so plainly, irritates him. It’s like the equivalent of asking why the grass is wet during a rainstorm— but sorcerers wouldn’t know about that sort of thing either. 

“Because... I’ve never been to a place like this.” 

En seems to take that as a compliment, because he huffs heartily, laughter hiding under his tongue. “You’re free to leave, if you’d like. I can brief you later.” 

Shin stands to his feet as fast as he can, attempting to look like he’s not doing exactly that. It’s not often he says this, but he _wants_ to take a shower; wash the lingering powdery smell of women’s perfume off his skin, scrub away the remaining heat from her warm body. 

“It might be better with a friend.” En takes another drawl, and Shin watches one of the ladies drag five of her slim fingers down his chest. The gesture is obscene enough to make him stare at the table and think about how long it will take for the ice in that bucket to melt. “Noi’s scheduled to come in tonight.”

Well, that makes him look up. Shin can’t hide the appalled look on his face. “She works here?” 

“She’s covering for one of my staff members.” 

As he leaves, Shin wonders what kind of scoundrel he’s working for. What kind of man would let his younger cousin work at a club like his? And Noi, at that. What was he thinking? What was _she_ thinking? Noi, with her elfin frame and thin little limbs, no curves at her bust or middle or hips. She would stick out like a sore thumb.

____________________

When he came back at _tonight_ , ducking inside to quell nothing else but his own curiosity by catching Noi at the bar, wearing the same clothes as ever and carefully wiping down whiskey glasses; he left quietly, as if he were never there.

____________________

Noi is sitting giddy in the passengers seat of his car, map spread across her thighs as she traces the outlines of streets with her index finger before telling him which way to turn. She’s gotten pretty good at this. The first few times she had offered, Shin was convinced she didn’t know the difference between left and right, but now she guides him like a walking, talking, GPS. 

“Turn over there and head straight,” she offered. In response, he made an appreciative kind of hum and switched on his indicator. 

Glancing away from the road, his eyes drift to her. It’s easy to look when she’s not looking right back, attending to something that isn’t him. Her mask had been stuffed into the glovebox a while ago, so he gets an eyeful of alabaster hair. She had chopped most of it off a few days ago with a pair of crafting scissors he found suspiciously on her dresser. 

It looked good on her, he told himself. He was starting to realize everything did. Her previously pin-straight waterfall of hair was now wispy at the ends, sometimes stuck to the sides of her face with water, or sweat, or soap, or blood. As he looked, for a little too long, the wispy pieces she had forgotten to clean up caught his attention. They curled in C-shapes, against the pale nape of her neck. 

“Senpai, we’re here.” 

Shin realized the car was still rolling. 

Wordlessly, he eased onto the breaks.

As she tugged her mask back on, he ducked his head to glimpse out of her side window. The cream colored building with brick-red accents was not where their targets were supposedly hiding. Shin sighed at her incompetence, then leaned back in his seat to settle with his own.

“This isn’t the place, Noi.” Reaching into his front front pocket, he pushed a crumpled up photo En had provided her way. He didn’t have to look to know what kind of face she would make. The half-apologetic, half sheepish sort of expression that lasted just a second and screamed

_Oopsie._

and made him weak enough to forgive her.

“Not _here_ here,” she laughed, haphazardly throwing the unfolded map to the back seat and taking the photo from his hands. Apparently, she had undone her seatbelt when he wasn’t looking, and she’s out of the car in a flash, slamming the door in his face.

When he gets out, she’s already a good way ahead of him. Marching along the cobblestone street, only wide enough for a car-and-a-half, she seems to ignore the multicolor signs above and focus on the photo.

Of the many red-light districts in the Sorcerers World, this one would be considered _‘classier’_ by most. It’s costume-y and gives off an amusement park vibe, glowing like the mansion grounds on Blue Night. Lining the road are casinos and dive bars and closet-sized yakiniku restaurants. Dusk had already fallen, and Shin is noticing the sorcerers grouped in twos, threes, and fours, all wandering the strip. 

Shin averts his eyes from the flyers, posters, billboards, openly putting on display the reason they’re really here. He’s been trying to ignore the inevitable, but they’ve been sent to catch some of En’s ex-collaborators (hopefully not in the act) at a Love Hotel. Intel, as En likes to call whatever goon has the biggest crush on him this week, says this is where they’re camping out for the night.

 _“Don’t get distracted,”_ En had told him in complete seriousness, as if this type of degeneracy interested him.

Glad that Noi, without intent, had set some distance between them; he walks cautiously behind her until she stops in the middle of the street. She, who’s image clashes with the depravity of the background behind her, holds out the photo and declares, “seems like it’s this one.” 

Shin stands five feet away, out of range from her blinding innocence. She looks puzzled at his distance, then straightens out and steps back, gesturing her head towards the entrance. “Ah! Go ahead, Senpai.”

He thought she might have gone ahead, and made him look less suspect. Nobody else was watching his inner turmoil, but embarrassment burns a hole in his stomach nonetheless. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he tries to walk ahead indifferently, but the automatic doors betray him, and he stands slouched, for three excruciating seconds, before the sensors register. 

At this point, he’d be okay with this mission being his last.

There’s an older lady behind the desk, but looking her in the eye would make Shin feel just as corrupt as if he weren’t here for business reasons.

“So,” Noi cuts in, staring overhead at the pictures of available rooms, all garishly colorful and dangerously clean. “I say we get a room on the same floor, then— _KABOOM_! Ambush ‘em.”

Shin chokes. “What? We’re bribing her to let us in.”

The idea is more roundabout, but if it doesn’t work first try, Shin has experience pushing. Noi’s nose scrunches in confusion.

“That doesn’t make any sense. It’d probably be cheaper to just—“

“Stay the whole night? No.”

“Not for the whole night, idiot, look.” Noi wraps her arm around his shoulders and tugs him close. It’s a sad reminder that she’s only a few inches shorter now, and still miles stronger. Her finger points up and brings his attention to the price list, set the same for each room, besides the extra large top-floor suites, which Shin doesn’t want to think about why you’d need.

“12,000 for the night, but 3,500 for three hours,” 

(He knows how to goddamn read, so there’s no good reason to be whispering what it says in his ear.)

“— and we’ll only need one, won’t we, Senpai?” 

Fuck, alright, that’s enough.

She’s succeeding in riling him up, but not in the way she’s probably trying to. Feeling like he’s about to combust, Shin wriggles out of her loose grip and firmly shakes his head. 

He _doesn’t_ imagine the room they might end up in, draped in purple light and drowning in the sticky smell of sweet perfume so eminent in the lobby. He _doesn’t_ think about feeling the dry, over-washed sheets under his palms as he might sit on the edge of the bed. Maybe, Noi would flock excitedly around the room. Maybe, she’d lock the door, or run the bath water, or turn on the T.V. to see what was on. Maybe, she’d sit beside him. Maybe, she’d sit on top of him.

Shin decides he’d rather kill himself here and now than let his mind wander any further.

“I see.” Noi says, and in the event their contract has suddenly given her the power to read his thoughts, he prepares for his heart to stop beating. It’s hard to identify the look hiding under her mask, and he wonders if she’s as thankful for that as he is right now.

“Just because we go in together, doesn’t mean we _have_ to have sex. It’s not a rule, or anything.” 

Oh.

She’s read him completely wrong. Her voice, so nonchalant, so disconnected; when compared to his worries— it’s almost laughable. Humiliated, Shin does not feel like laughing. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Noi say the word _’sex’_ before. He wishes it sounded more like a crime.

To stop himself from floundering, letting his mouth fall open uselessly like a fish out of water, he marches forward and decides to make the entire process a lot more complicated.

____________________

The lead happened to be wrong, anyway. The guys they were tailing were so piss poor, they couldn’t even afford to stay the night.

____________________

_am almos t readt to go arw you?_

... backspace.

_i’m,m almsot eready,. yuo?_

... fuck, didn’t it just get worse?

Shin glared at the poor excuse of a text message he was trying to send to Noi. The flip phones En had issued were too small for his clunky fingers, and no matter how hard he tried to get used to pressing those tiny squared-off buttons, the typos wouldn’t stop. Although not incomprehensible, he had already rewritten it enough, and his partner lived close enough to not warrant anymore worrying about a glorified pager.

Deleting the message, he checked himself in the mirror, squinted, then left; locking the door behind him.

Noi lives on the same floor as him. He had changed rooms a few times after climbing the ranks, but he was never sharing a room with low-level staff. En valued him from the start, but apparently not enough to give him his own bathroom, which he can complain about to this day.

On the other hand, Noi’s kept the same room since she moved in. It’s big, spacious, and few more square feet than his own now. When he had visited first, despite the array of dusted bookshelves and drawers of clothes— like a life-sized dollhouse; it had seemed empty. Even emptier than his own, at the time, because his mattress covered half the floor.

His recollection ends as he walks down the hall, and stops at her door. He brought a fist to her door and knocked, four times.

“Noi, it’s me,” he called. 

“Ah, Senpai! Come in, it’s unlocked!”

He makes a face at that. Even if En’s place is safe, she shouldn’t be leaving her doors open. These are dangerous times; the Cross-Eyes Boss has been taking out elite members left and right, so they can’t rule out the possibility that he could attack here. Hadn’t she given him a spare key? He didn’t bring it with him, he forgot about it honestly, busy with duplicating his own to return the favor. It feels a little intimate, but he’s justifying it with the threat of danger.

Shin turns her doorknob, and indeed, it’s unlocked. He’s greeted by a familiar sight, the apartment with her things strewn across the floor, and the walls littered in picture frames. He doesn’t know when the photographs, each the size of his hand, started showing up on her walls, but they suddenly overwhelmed the white space and became an archive of their time together 

There’s a new one. A blurry picture Noi had taken with the lens aimed at herself, only half in view, with Shin looking distracted in the background. 

_Why would you get this framed?_ He tried to deny the smile that tugged at his lips. 

As much as he’d like to look, take his time to point out every new garbage photo he could find, they’d miss their reservation if they waited for much longer. Their last job had ended with Noi winning a bet, meaning she got to pick where they ate. Obviously, she’s gone and picked a fancy Steakhouse in yet another attempt to break his wallet. Shin had dressed up for the occasion, which meant one of his usual black jackets went over a hoodie. 

“Hurry your ass up, we’ve gotta go or else we’ll be late.” He shouts, staying put by the hall, where the kitchen and living room diverge. 

“No we won’t, you’ll just drive faster,” Laughing at her own quip, that idiot. Shin sighed, but let out a snicker, because like always, she was right. Her chuckling was a sound he couldn’t long stay away from, so he walked forward, picking up a stray sweater on the ground and starting to lazily fold it before giving up and tossing it to the couch instead. 

“How much longer are you g—“

Shin stops at the frame separating her bedroom from her living. 

Naked, from the waist up, Noi is leaned over rummaging through her drawers. Her bottom half is only covered by dark boyshorts, but Shin can’t seem to recall what color they are because he’s too focused on her large chest and the broadness of her sides and the toned skin on her stomach and the muscles on her back. Her hair is long enough now that it grazes her shoulder blades, sweeping back as she turns to face him.

Face him? _Now?_

Not like she could leave them behind, so her boobs swing with her. Soft nipples and peachy areolas shoot holes into his resolve.

“Just— trying to find this damn top.” She spat, but he was already facing the door. Frenzied, he searched his pockets for his mask, and hurriedly pulled it on.

“I’m’onna wait in the car.” Shin didn’t dare to turn back around, and leaves in much more of a hurry than he came.

He starts his car and immediately blasts the air, even though it’s barely September and the outside is cold enough to make him shiver. Her skin is still seared into his mind, all soft and picturesque, with no blemishes or unsavory scars to match his own. He’s not jealous— he’s fucking _enamored_. It isn’t enough, just to acknowledge Noi allowed him to look. Sorcerer’s ways of showing affinity, and their sense of social boundaries, are all botched. They’re different from Hole, and he’s been a sorcerer since he got his magic to work, but this is one hill he’s finding difficult to get over.

Convincing himself it’s not a big deal in her eyes— or anyone else’s for that matter; Shin decides making a big deal out of it makes _him_ a pervert. 

Noi flings open the door with little grace, wearing the damn top she had been looking for, long sleeved, the neckline a deep, dangerous V. Shin buckles in for the ride.

____________________

When Shin keeps his face hidden behind the Steakhouse’s tall, leatherbound menu (for reasons unspeakable), Noi props her elbows on the table and teases, tells him if he can’t read the menu from that far away, he needs to get around to buying some glasses, which is also true.

____________________

Shin is on his second glass of wine. En had told him earlier, before he started drinking, that he’s not allowed to get drunk, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get a little tipsy— and if not for his own pleasure just to endure this shitty get-together.

En’s on the stakeout for a partner, hoping to lure someone worthy into his flytrap by illuminating his greenery and throwing a garden party. Adorned with fairy lights and the weird bioluminescence of some of his mushrooms, it’s nice enough for rich people to want to spend more than forty minutes outside. 

_The drinks help_ , he guesses. _Makes these prudes forget about mosquitos._

He’s here as security, per usual, but had lost his partner after they both tasted the salad offered, then figured they’d order takeout together when this was over with. She must have gone off to find something more substantial. 

He picks up on puzzle pieces of conversation, but is mostly zoned out, focused up to the cloudless sky of the Sorcerer’s Realm. 

Noi, in her elephantlike grace, somehow manages to sneak up behind him. He jumps when he feels her warm hand on his shoulder, but she’s smiling when he turns to scold her, and even though the wine in his cup is still sloshing, he finds it in his heart to forgive her. Holding an identical glass filled with a lighter liquid, Shin figures she’s found something else to snack on. She doesn’t drink on an empty stomach.

“I’ve got to hand it to him,” she starts, giving away her demeanor with the sourness in her voice. “This is one of the worst parties he’s thrown yet.”

Shin could beg to differ, thinking of any parties his Devil Associates are invited to. He doesn’t want to badmouth Duston or Haru, or any of her surprisingly many Devil friends, so he nods, and brings his glass to his lips.

She sighs, loud, heavy and clear. 

“I want to go straight to your room when this is over.”

He sputters, only internally this time, finally getting used to suppressing any physical reactions to Noi’s flirting, much to her dismay.

“I—“ Shin pauses, lowering his volume so nobody can listen in. “I have to walk Gura, first.”

Without hesitation, she presses their shoulders together. “I’ll come with.”

God, she’s bold. The alcohol makes his tongue heavy, so he nods, in order to not embarrass himself. He’s still going to pass this off as just buzzed. Tonight’s air is crisp enough to keep him from overheating under her impulses. 

They take turns sipping on their respective glasses. They’ve declared this dark corner their post.

____________________

Later in the night, when she’s sure no one is looking, Noi links their pinkies together, behind their backs— and more than the inappropriate party games En orchestrates, more than the high-slits in the guests skirts, more than the couples leaving in pairs to find somewhere private, or more than those like him, who would rather avert their eyes; Shin thinks it’s the most scandalous thing in the room.

____________________

**Author's Note:**

> could you tell... that i hate dialogue?
> 
> anyway thank you for reading!!! i’m still working on the quality of my writing but this is very fun practice
> 
> if anyone is interested in talking more about shinnoi my twitter is @kiramekirarins feel free to dm me my dumbass will indulge


End file.
